


Old Dog, New Tricks

by WhiskeyMikeFoxtrot



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior
Genre: Gen, House Davion, Royal 22nd BattleMech Regiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22145638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskeyMikeFoxtrot/pseuds/WhiskeyMikeFoxtrot
Summary: Operation Bulldog took its toll on the troops that carried it out. General Scott Haley of the AFFC's Royal 22nd BattleMech Regiment, is no exception. The campaign against Clan Smoke Jaguar nearly cost him his family's 'Mech. His last duel against their desperate warriors nearly cost him his life. Now, man and machine are both mended, but the question of how completely they have healed remains. And are either of them still what they were before they answered duty's call?





	Old Dog, New Tricks

Some things always take a person’s breath away. The local sun rising over the curve of a planet in space. A baby reaching up to take their parent’s hand by the finger. Their first love breathing their name. Some experiences just never got old. There was always that first, electric rush of excitement, no matter how fast the crushing weight of familiarity came in behind it to squash it flat.

For Scott Haley, standing at the foot of his ‘Mech, looking up was always that kind of experience. Decades on, and he could still remember the first time. He remembered the sound of his bootheels on the reinforced pavement of the hangar on Solaris. Remembered the smell of scorched metal - someone had been welding something. He wasn’t sure what, but the cascade of sparks stood out sharply in his memory.

He remembered standing at the foot of that iron behemoth and staring up at the cockpit a good ten meters and more above the ground. Remembered knowing for the first time that the titan before him was _his_. That it was a part of him, like a painter’s brush or a samurai’s sword, and that it always would be.

He remembered it giving him a chill that had nothing to do with the springtime breeze on his bare legs.

Standing there at the foot of his ‘Mech, separated from that moment by decades in time and who knew how many lightyears in space, he felt a chill run along his spine again. That same rush of power and freedom and responsibility that he felt back then. That same rush, and something else. Something colder that reached for his insides. Little tendrils of ice worming their way under his skin through the new scars that peppered his side.

He was, in some ways, the very image of a MechWarrior. The classical picture, almost. Upright of carriage and proud of bearing with a build and a stature to match his ride. Bold, brilliant green eyes staring out from a high-cheekboned, square face. Pale skin dusted over with a spray of freckles. And, above it all, a shock of coppery, red hair. 

Hair he trimmed short on top, too short to grab in a fight. The sides, he shaved bare to give unimpeded skin access for the electrodes that allowed a hundred tons of fusion-powered war machine to borrow his sense of balance for a while. Never mind that neurohelmets hadn’t required that kind of skin contact for most of the length of his career. It was a part of his identity, and the way he pictured himself in his mind’s eye. Maybe, when he retired, he’d grow his hair out. But not yet.

If he thought about it much - which he didn’t - he’d probably blame the example set by his Daddy Gunnar. Gunnar had always worn his hair like that. Thus, to him, that was just what a professional MechWarrior looked like.

There was a youthfulness to his features. A youthfulness that he didn’t feel as he stood at the foot of the towering war machine before him. Scars aside - the legacy of a life of violence - he could pass for a man ten to fifteen years his junior. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, sure, and his lips, but they were few. And, if he gave his hair’s coppery colour a little help from a bottle from time to time, at least it was all _his_ , otherwise. At least he still had all of it.

That which he didn’t scrupulously shave off, at least.

Standing at the foot of his Mech, he didn’t feel young. He felt the weight of every one of his decades, and more besides. Felt the weight of each of the stripes on the shoulders of his simple, olive jumpsuit. Felt the streamlined, lightweight cooling vest he wore beneath it pulling him down like it was lined with lead weights.

There was a cane back in the locker room adjoining the hangar. He’d left it leaning jauntily against the water fountain by the door. He could go back and get it. No one would think less of him. He’d nearly died - _should_ be dead, by all rights. He shouldn’t be back so soon. _No one_ should be back so soon. 

If one of his Warriors tried to crawl out of a hospital bed and back into the cockpit this quickly, he would order him back to bed in a heartbeat. No sense finishing the job the Smoke Jags started. He was only human, after all. He needed to heal. No one could expect anything more of him than that.

Nobody but himself.

His teeth worried his bottom lip. Then, consciously forcing himself to stop, he cast his gaze about the hangar to make sure that no one had caught his moment of self-doubt. Yet, in the end, his eyes came back to the monster before him. They would _always_ come back to the monster before him.

 _Atlas_. AS7-D. AS7-F, with the help of an upgrade kit from Robinson Standard. Even without looking, he could see the differences in his mind’s eye. The narrower bore of the gauss rifle that replaced the autocannon. The redundant, independent missile racks that flanked the reactor to the right and left. The paired lasers on the vambraces instead of the singletons of the 7-D.

The _Old Dog_. 

She was a family heirloom, in her way. He might not have been Gunnar Larsen’s biological child, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the man’s _son_. Or that Gunnar was any less Scott’s father than Ethan Haley had been. They were a _family_ , and the _Old Dog_ had been in Gunnar’s family since the days of the Star League. 

Scott showed the drive, the talent and, most importantly, the _desire_ to be a MechWarrior. His half-sister didn’t. Thus, it was Scott that Gunnar trained. Scott that inherited his father’s ride. Scott that carried on the family tradition while his sister did something that made _her_ happy.

He took one step closer. Then two. He reached out his fingers and ran them lightly across the surface of the armoured hull. Over the massive foot of the assault-weight behemoth. Someone had done a magnificent job restoring her to fighting trim. All the bumps and scratches. The scuffs and marks in the paint that came as part and parcel of moving a hundred tons of militant fury about. Someone had hammered and buffed and patched them out of the Durallex Special Heavy armour plate with an artisan’s care.

And the paint. The paintjob was magnificent. She was the regimental command ‘Mech, so of course she was painted in the regimental colours. The deep, rich, royal blue as the base. The blood red stripes that ran up from the toes of the wide-set feet to the cavernous chest, only to arc out to the broad shoulders. Red lines flanked by razorlines of snow white. 

And there, on the right of the chest, the symbol that gave it all meaning: the Davion sunburst with crossed, archaic revolvers set behind the blade of the upraised sword. The crest of the Royal 22nd Regiment: The Gunslingers.

He looked up at the seemingly-factory fresh relic of days long past and sighed. In her way, the _Old Dog_ was family, too. She’d been wounded far worse than he had, and she’d been waiting longer to be nursed back to health, too. Waiting patiently in the corner of his DropShip’s Mech Bay for resources and facilities they just hadn’t had. She’d been waiting long enough. Waited too long by half, in fact.

Giving the cool plate of armoured composite a solid pat, Scott shook off his reverie. Hefting the satchel with his neurohelmet, he climbed the short ladder onto the stage of the scissor lift waiting patiently by the monster’s side. Best to get it over with.

He knew the old girl better than he knew his own body. Every nick, every aftermarket part, every control run that had to be rebuilt in the time he owned her. His blood and skin and sweat and, yes, tears could probably be found behind every access panel and maintenance hatch on her hundred ton frame if a forensics team cared to look hard enough.

Yet, what he saw in his mind’s eye, and what he saw as the scissor lift rose steadily towards the cockpit didn’t match up. For the first time since Daddy Gunnar took him down to the hangar on Solaris to introduce them, the Old Dog was a stranger to him. That simple fact hit him with an almost physical force. Even kneeling on the lift platform, he still had to grab ahold of the railing to steady himself as a wave of vertigo washed over him.

He drew himself back up to his feet, relying on the railing to remain upright rather more than his pride would allow him to admit. He took in the steel and ceramic titan with the practiced eye of a veteran MechWarrior. He looked at her, not as a trusted steed, but as an unknown and potentially dangerous new machine.

Cheap pulp novels always talked about the warrior and the ‘Mech becoming one in combat. That was just sensationalist garbage. A ‘Mech, no matter how beloved, was just a tool. When Scott strapped himself into the ejection seat of his _Atlas_ , he didn’t _become one_ with the Old Dog; he piloted her.

Yet in a very real sense, Old Dog was still a part of him. He had piloted her since before he was old enough for Daddy Gunnar to legally transfer her title to him. He’d supervised her upgrades when the Lostech systems became available towards the start of the Clan War. He knew her better than any man alive.

As a result, the realization that, for the first time in almost a decade, that _wasn’t_ a gauss rifle at the _Atlas’_ s hip felt like the world had gone spinning off its axis. It bore a certain superficial resemblance, sure, but the bore was all wrong for the Poland Main Model A he was used to. And those weren’t driver coils he could see just inside the muzzle. Those were _focusing magnets_. A PPC.

His eyes darted to the forearm as the lift passed it. Gone were the paired medium lasers he was used to. In their place, only a single energy weapon remained. Not only that, but it didn’t look like one of the standard fifty millimeter units he had started out with. It almost looked like…

“Stop the lift,” he ordered, bracing himself as the lift lurched to a halt. “Is that… is that an eighty millimeter laser?”

“Close,” the woman running the lift answered. “Seventy six point two. A three inch lens. Good eye, sir.”

Scott drew himself up straight. He forced himself away from the railing by force of will as he squared off with the ruddy-cheeked fireplug of an astech. 

He knew it was irrational. The last time he’d seen the old girl, she’d been shot to pieces. One arm had been completely blown away, carried off the field only as salvage after the battle. The other had been stripped down to the bone by missile strikes and cluster munitions. His armour had been more memory than metal, and the left leg had seized almost entirely.

Now here she was, as good as new and twice as pretty. Her losses in armour had been made good, her lost limb had been reattached. She was ready to fight. Yet he found himself irrationally furious that this had come at the cost of meddling with a configuration he knew inside and out. It felt almost as if he’d gone to sleep and woken up in a body he didn’t recognize anymore.

That thought drew him up short. It took a lot of the heat out of his anger. Given how many of his boys and girls had done precisely that, with parts maimed or missing thanks to enemy fire, it felt unworthy of him. He took a deep breath.

“I know we’re a long way from home,” he said, his tone calm and measured. “Supply’s gotta be tight… but really? 7-K?”

“No, sir,” she answered. “Not quite. For one thing, the Victory Nickel Alloys Independence uses take an eighty eight millimeter lens, not a three inch. And they’ve got an L/56 lasing chamber. This one’s only fifty five calibres long. She’s shorter.”

He took another breath, then let it out slowly.

“I’m sorry, sergeant,” he said. “That was a bit more… I was out of line. Please. Start the lift. And walk me through it. What did I miss while I was in the shop?”

“Right, so I’m guessing you probably saw the PPC replacing your main gun,” she said as the lift rose once more. “And we’ve covered the lasers for your secondary battery. You want the short version?”

Scott nodded, his gaze drawn inevitably back to his war machine.

“It’s the Cats, sir,” she said. “When you got Norris’s _Devastator_ shot out from under you, holding back that Smoke Jag breakthrough, you must have impressed them something fierce. They sent a tech crew over to get your ride back into fighting trim. She’s all Clan-tech, now.”

Reaching the head of the assault ‘Mech, Scott braced himself as the lift came to a halt with another lurch.

“Long version?” he asked.

“Internal structure, gyro, armour,” she said. “I won’t say they’re all original equipment, but they’re factory standard replacement parts, at least. Durallex Special Heavy plate, Foundation 10X structure. The usual. Engine’s the same one you shipped out with, but the heat sink array’s been uprated. Again.”

As she spoke, Scott knelt down on the elevated stage once more. He finished unzipping his duffel bag. Reaching inside, he drew out the ballistic vest he liked to wear inside the cockpit during combat situations. Sure, this was anything but, but that didn’t change a thing in his mind. If he trained differently from how he fought, then it didn’t really help him.

Lifting the heavy vest, he pulled it over the olive drab body suit he already wore and snapped it in place. He twisted left and right to make sure the trauma plates wouldn’t obstruct his mobility too much. Then, he double-checked to make sure that the cooling suit’s umbilical connection wasn’t blocked

“Main gun’s one of their spooky-good particle cannons,” the astech continued rattling off as she extended the gangplank to the cockpit hatch. “Heavy lasers for your secondaries - also extended range.”

Scott adjusted his vest’s straps and snugged the suit’s zipper up under his chin. Then, finally, he drew his pistol just far enough out of the holster strapped to the loops of his ballistic vest to check the loaded chamber indicator and make sure it was still on safe before returning it to its place.

“You’ve still got long range ten racks to port and starboard for your missile batteries and a pair of medium lasers in your aft arc, but they’re all new hardware. Plus, they did something to your targeting system that required a whole new maintenance manual.”

As the litany continued, Scott handed off the now-empty duffel bag to the astech. Stepping out onto the gangplank, he crossed over to the open cockpit. He’d climbed inside a hundred times - a thousand. Only now, something drew him up short. The astech frowned.

“Something wrong, sir?”

Scott sniffed the air. Slowly, he glanced back over his shoulder.

“She smells _new_.”

The astech snorted and nodded sympathetically. For just a moment, both pilot and assistant tech looked every year of their respective ages.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “An _Atlas_ with New Mech Smell. Ain’t that a hell of a thing?”

Turning back to the cockpit, Scott grabbed the handles to help steady himself. Then, taking a deep breath, he slithered into a space that, for the first time since he was a little kid, didn’t feel like home anymore.

Every cockpit was different, but even in a monster like Haley’s _Atlas_ there was rarely any wasted space. Because it would be precisely that: a waste. Every cubic centimeter that was left empty was one that could have been filled with another display, targeting computer, or radio. Or that could have been _omitted_ to make for a smaller target profile, overall.

In short, aside from the bare minimum necessary for the pilot to climb in and out, most designers tended to fill every last bit of cockpit space with one of two things. Either they packed in more equipment to help the pilot destroy his enemies, or more protection to keep him from being destroyed in turn.

There had been a time when he could have swarmed into the cockpit and down into the ejection seat as easily as most men climbed into bed.

Of course, there had also been a time when he’d been young and stupid and felt like he could take on the whole Draconis Combine with his bare hands. A time when he’d actually _free-climbed_ the whole ten meters and more from the ground into the cockpit without using the emergency egress ladder. There had been a bet involved, of course. And he was pretty sure there was a girl. Alcohol had definitely been a factor.

He wasn’t as far from the invincible young man he used to be as the dates on the calendar would suggest. At least, that’s what he told himself. And he’d convinced himself that the incision from his surgery and the cuts that he’d had to get stitched up were more or less healed. Yet, as he swung himself over the side console, he could feel a sharp tugging in his side all the same.

Settling into the ejector seat, he closed his eyes and took a moment to just… breathe. He didn’t _feel_ like he was bleeding, so he was pretty sure that he hadn’t just popped himself open all over again. After a moment, he nodded. He was ready to continue.

The astech - her nametape read _Weiss_ \- knelt on the hatch coaming. Leaning past the seated Warrior, she reached into the alcove above and behind his ejector seat. While he made certain that the coolant hose and telemetry leads were plugged in properly, she lifted his neurohelmet from its little niche.

Scott’s cooling suit was a miracle of what used to be called Lostech that he’d laid hands on because the New Avalon Institute of Science had developed it all over again. Because they’d farmed out the manufacturing program to Johnston Industries. And, because people there still remembered his father fondly, they had offered him a chance to try it under battlefield conditions.

His neurohelmet was a miracle of Lostech because, when his _Atlas_ ’s gyros had shredded themselves to pieces after the Old Dog had been gut-shot by a _Cauldron Born_ , driving jagged shards of twisted armour and structural members into the housings, the resulting feedback had irreparably burned out the delicate circuitry in the helmet that had been carried on that little shelf for generations.

The Nova Cats had been forced to replace it with new equipment, just as they’d been forced to replace a lot of the interior of the cockpit after he’d ejected from the falling, crippled ‘Mech. The new helmet was lightweight and sleek, looking more like a pilot’s crash helmet than the torturous monstrosities that he was used to. It had a tinted visor that slid down over the eyes and a golden, anti-laser glazing to match his cockpit viewports. There was even a breathing mask to keep the pilot from baking his lungs out in the heat of combat. It was the next best thing to pure holovid magic. Compared to this new helmet, the old one might as well have been made using stone knives and a pile of bear skins.

It also lacked any personality. The new helmet was a matte grey oblong that gathered all its circuitry in a removable, replaceable plug in the back. Irregular oval bulges at the temples carried the crown of neurodes that let his sense of balance interface with the ‘Mech’s systems to keep it upright. It was smooth and sleek and completely lacking all the little touches that instantly told him that his old helmet was _his_.

Gone was the faded crest of Daddy Gunnar’s old stable on Solaris. Absent was the dent he’d made in the thing when it saved his life after a faulty training SRM had skipped off his cockpit rather than detonating harmlessly and had bounced his head off the egress hatch. Or the nicks and scrapes and bumps that he’d spent countless hours wondering just how Gunnar’s ancestors had gotten them there. The little marks of character that described the unbroken line from Gunnar’s great, great ancestor to the man who had taught him so much of what it meant to be a warrior.

He wished he could say that it was uncomfortable. The truth was, as Weiss settled it onto his head, it fit perfectly. Whether that was due to some miracle Clan supermaterial like the gunk that plugged up breaches in Toad suits adapting to his head, or if they’d just measured his skull while he was out cold, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that it probably fit him better than his old one did… which annoyed him more than a little.

“Wait,” he said. Reaching out, he plucked a marker from one of Weiss’s pockets. One of the black, permanent ones used to mark armour plates for cutting. “Take the helmet back for a moment.”

Back when he’d been a raw cadet in the Warrior’s Hall on New Syrtis, he’d taken a marker just like this one and added his own little touch of character to his old neurohelmet. It was a tribute to the strength of the ink they used that, throughout the years, no matter how it got chipped or dented or bumped, the ink had never faded. If a bit of what he’d written had come away from the helmet, it was always because the paint he’d written it on had chipped off.

Pulling the cap off the marker with his teeth, he waited for the astech to take the helmet back before scrawling the same notation on the flat grey surface of the new helmet.

**DO NOT PUNCTURE: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE**

He grunted as he admired his handiwork. Capping the marker, he slipped it back into the pen pouch on Weiss’s thigh.

“Much better,” he said as he resumed his place in the ejection seat. “Thanks.”

The cockpit hatch thumped into place with the finality of a coffin lid closing. The locking bars grated against their housings like nails down Scott’s back. Always before, that sound had been comforting. Calming, even. He felt secure in his cockpit. Now, it just felt claustrophobic and cold. This wasn’t his home anymore. He didn’t belong here.

Scott sat in silence and darkness. The only light in the cockpit came through the armoured viewports that made up the eyes in the skull-like head of the ‘Mech. His hands clenched and unclenched around the unpowered control sticks. This was ridiculous. he was a _MechWarrior_. This was his home. And yet still he sat there.

Finally, he unwrapped his fingers from the sticks. First the right hand, then the left came away. Twisting in his ejection seat, he pulled the red ribbon-tagged pin keeping the plastic cover over the ignition button dogged down. Wrapping the thick ribbon around the pin, he tucked it away in a pocket on his cooling suit.

His thumb flipped up the cover. Then, with a deep breath, he pushed down the big, red button until it clicked.

The effect was almost immediate. Down, below his feet, in the depths of the mechanical monster he mastered, he could hear the fuel pumps growling to life. He could feel the initial vibrations right through his chair as the array of gyros that kept the war machine upright spun up. Even the atmosphere changed as the fury of the fusion reactor bled waste heat into the cockpit.

One by one, the cockpit screens lit up as the computer that controlled his iron beast woke from its slumber. The general arrangement was familiar, but… gone were the analog gauges he had grown up with. in their place, his console was dominated by a pair of full-colour multi-function displays over his knees. 

The main display between the two eye-shaped viewports that showed him the world in front of his ‘Mech looked mostly unchanged, but the original multifunction display - the monochrome, black-and-gold one that had been the only such display the cockpit used to boast - was gone from beneath it. Instead, the console space between his legs had been devoted to what looked like a holographic projector.

“ _Identify._ ”

The sudden intrusion of an almost unexpected voice both shocked and calmed Scott. At some point lost to history, one of the ‘Mech’s previous pilots had replaced the computer’s voice pack with an aftermarket program. No one knew why or when, but the smoky, computer generated contralto voice was as familiar to him as his own. At least the Clans hadn’t changed that.

“Haley,” he said, calmly, but clearly for the voice analyzer’s benefit. “Scott Andrew. Callsign, Comet.”

Almost more out of reflex than from conscious thought, Scott began checking what readouts were live even before the computer had unlocked. He knew that he had a few moments while the ancient computer compared his voice to its re-

“ _Confirmed_ ,” the computer interjected after only a moment’s pause. “ _Haley, Scott Andrew. Callsign: Comet. Input identification code to proceed._ ”

Scott blinked in surprise. The _Atlas_ he piloted was old in the way that only royal dynasties or terrain features or some really good pubs could claim to be. It had been around for generations, through good times and bad, across countless pilots. If there was one thing that he could count on, it was that the identification process would take long enough for him to double check the cockpit dosimeter and adjust the cooling vents. Not so anymore, it seemed.

For the first time, one of the changes the Nova Cats had made in refitting his ‘Mech made him smile. Almost in spite of himself, but he smiled nonetheless.

“ _Input identification code_.”

Scott took a breath…

_Wind rushed past the cockpit as he fell, but he couldn’t hear it. Even at a distance, the whistling howl was lost in the roar of the drives of the DropShips following his lance in. Usually, this was a job for the light ‘Mechs. Usually, they screened the landing. But, then again, there was nothing usual about this drop, or this target._

_He’d argued successfully that the first forces on the ground would need a little extra firepower in order to hold out while the rest of their ‘Mechs deployed. They were dropping right on the enemy’s head. That meant that the company would be counting on that first lance out the door to hold. And the battalion would be counting on his company. And Marshal Hasek-Davion would be counting on all of them._

_As he watched the parade ground below rushing up at him, with the little shapes of Liao ‘Mechs breaking out of their shock in twos and threes, he suddenly found himself wishing he hadn’t been quite so persuasive._

_Too late for that. A drogue chute strapped to his_ Atlas _jerked him upright before breaking away. The bolt-on solid fuel boosters roared to life. The hundred ton frame of the_ Old Dog _shook like a leaf in the wind as their fury slowed his descent to something more survivable. Three… two…_

 _He bent his ‘Mech’s knees to absorb some of the shock as he hit. The impact drove footprints into ferrocrete rated to withstand whole companies passing in review. Rockets streaked past his cockpit as a_ Raven _pilot recovered enough from the shock to engage._

_It didn’t matter. Even if they killed him, they couldn’t take this away from him. Out of all the Kathil Uhlans, he was…_

“…First to Sian.”

Even more than thirty years later, just saying the words aloud was enough to bring a proud smile to his lips. He had been young and foolish and still hurting from the death of so many of his friends on Sarna. When he’d talked his company commander into air dropping his lance instead of the lights to screen the landing, she’d looked at him like he was out of his mind. And maybe he had been.

But he’d also been there when the 1st Kathil Uhlans snatched Justin Allard out from under old Maxie Liao’s nose. And he’d done so from the very tip of the spear. He’d been right. Even nearly getting himself killed by the Smoke Jaguars three decades later could take that pride away from him.

“ _Confirmed_ ,” said the computer. “ _Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons safe. All systems nominal._ ”

Selecting the traffic control circuit, Scott depressed the push to talk button.

“Control, this is Gunslinger Six Actual,” he said. “Requesting clearance through to gunnery range, over.”

The delay in reply was brief, but noticeable. Nothing he needed to mention to anyone, though. Between the returning Nova Cat cluster just arrived from the zenith jump point, and the Royal 22nd trying to make good their battle damage before shipping out again, there was a lot going on.

“ _Gunslinger, Control,_ ” came the eventual response. “ _Be advised. Gunnery range 1-1 is currently in use. Apparently Cowboy-3 is running a little long testing some of their new salvage. We are diverting you to range 1-2. How copy, over?_ ”

“Solid copy, Control,” he said. “Diverting to range 1-2.”

“ _We have a hover jeep waiting at the hangar door to guide you to the new range_ ,” the controller explained. “ _Good hunting, Comet. Control out._ ”

—

The _Atlas_ rode as smooth as he remembered it. As smooth as a hundred tons of humanoid fury could, at any rate. 

He kept the throttle low as he emerged from the hangar the Nova Cats had so graciously loaned his regiment while they were on-planet. He’d followed the hover jeep’s lead as they weaved their way out of the training base. Then, once they had cleared the buildings and were on track for the gunnery range, he started to open it up.

He brought the big machine up to fifty KPH in the space of a matter of strides. Its long legs ate up the ground in vast bites as he followed his guide down the unfamiliar path. It was mostly a straight line up into the hills at this stage, so the monotony of the trip gave him some spare time to more thoroughly examine the changes to his cockpit layout.

The twin MFDs were more intuitive to use than he expected, given that they were the product of a warrior culture three hundred years divorced from his own. Apparently, some things were just universal. They could even be set to duplicate the function of the large, main display between his ‘Mech’s eyes, providing a forward view if it was knocked out. Coupled with the helmet-mounted head’s up display, that gave him a redundancy he liked.

For that matter, he quickly discovered that the head-mounted display seemed to be tracking his eye movements. On his way out of the base, he’d noticed that the main display wasn’t tagging the jeep or the ‘Mechs on sentry duty with the usual alphanumeric information strings to help him identify them. He’d assumed that was just because someone had left it set to a lower level of detail. 

Now, though, he was realizing that whenever he looked directly at the jeep, a set of brackets sprang up around it, and the targeting computer started feeding him a wide variety of information. Range, bearing, speed, a heading indicator, windage, IFF status, probable identification based on comparison with the warbook. It was more information than he was used to getting, but given that it only came up when he looked at the vehicle, it was somehow less intrusive than the old, omnipresent tags.

The display between his legs _was_ a hologram projector, as he’d assumed. It complimented the one above his head that projected the compressed three hundred and sixty degree view at the top of the main display. This one gave him a small, three dimensional view of the battlespace around him in his lap. One, he quickly figured out, fed by his ‘Mech’s sensors, and potentially augmented by satellite feeds and information from friendly units.

“That’ll come in handy,” he murmured to himself as he settled back into the ejector seat.

Even the seat was different.It was pretty recognisably a variation on the standard Martin-Holly zero-zero design he was used to. There were some of the little quirks and differences you’d expect from a knock-off or an evolutionary descendant from another manufacturer, but it was basically the same. The biggest different was the mounting. It…

 _…Rode on an odd arrangement of shock absorbers that ate up most of the_ Devastator _’s jolting gait. It didn’t fully muffle it, but it did smooth it out significantly. It reduced what should have been a rough ride to something more like a faintly bumpy float. It was… weird. Not bad, exactly, but weird. He wasn’t familiar enough with the DVS-2 to know whether that arrangement was standard or just some aftermarket improvement someone was trying out. Either way, he imagined it was the kind of thing that took a while to get used to._

_Not that he really had the time to concern himself with it._

Scott pushed the memory aside with an effort of will. Sure, the mounting system was similar, but this was a completely different set of circumstances than his last ride. There were no Smoke Jaguars out for blood, this time. There was no ticking clock thanks to his own screw-up. There were no civilians at risk. There was only…

… _Bright streaks of red and ruddy orange through the rock of the canyon walls. Probably iron deposits. If it was, the bone-dry stone walls bobbing past his borrowed cockpit probably explained why his sensors were having such a hard time pinning anything down. LIDAR and radar were just fine, but they were strictly line of sight. Any time he tried to call up his MAD gear, though, it just kept throwing back all manner of false readings and sensor ghosts._

_Fine. That ought to work in his favour, too._

_Up ahead. There was a little notch with a bit of an overhang where erosion had worn out a hollow in the stone. It looked just big enough for him to tuck Norris’s_ Devastator _away and out of sight. If the satellite maps were accurate, the quickest path out of the canyon network toward the city led right by this spot._

_Carefully, he backed his borrowed ride into the notch. Reaching out, he toggled the assault ‘Mech’s heat sinks off one by one before throttling back the fusion reactor to a mere trickle of power. Another set of switches silenced the active sensors. The ‘Mech was as close as he dared to shut down. Now all he had to do was…_

_._..Wait patiently in line while the crew of the jeep talked to the men in the guard house at the gate to the gunnery range. If he had to guess, he’d have said that control never notified the guard that they were coming. As if unauthorised personnel showed up with hundred ton war machines to shoot up the targets all the time while no one was looking.

Eventually, at just about the time that Scott was seriously considering just going off road and stepping over the fence, the guard relented. Signalling with the semaphore lights mounted on the back of the jeep, the blower spooled up and floated through the open gate. Then, flashing a salute, it slid off to one side to let him past.

He slowed the _Atlas_ to a crawl as he approached the start of the gunnery range. Surrounded on all sides by high, earthen berms, it was, perhaps, the safest place on the planet for him to put the machine through its paces.

Turning in his seat, he pulled another red-tagged pin from its place. Rolling it up, he stuffed it in his pocket. Then, flipping up the plastic cap, he hit the rocker switch beneath it.

“ _Weapons online_ ,” purred the computer in his ear.

A glance down at his MFDs confirmed it. For a moment, he watched the charge build in the capacitors for his particle cannon and the lasers mounted to the _Atlas’s_ forearm. He heard the heavy _thunkthunkthunk_ as rockets slid into place in their launch tubes. Within moments, he had green lights all the way down the board. Everything was ready. Now all he needed was a…

 _…Target_.

_There. Motion in the canyon. Slow. Almost tentative.Almost invisible, too. The mottled grey camouflage favoured by the Smoke Jaguars was maddeningly effective against the stone backdrop. Especially when applied to something as small as an Elemental suit._

He brought the _Atlas_ up to a slow walk. Hands on the control sticks, he eased it into the range proper. According to his briefing, the targets consisted of flat silhouettes painted onto fibreboard plates mounted on metal frameworks so that a ‘Mech’s MAD gear would have something to bite onto. Apparently, the range computer could also interact with a ‘Mech’s systems in order to project more realistic images onto a pilot’s display, but he left that function off for now. He didn’t need the…

… _Distraction of trying to filter through alphanumeric identifier strings. They could be useful for picking out which targets to engage, and which to avoid, but not now. There would be no strategy here, and damned little tactics. He would fight and he would destroy every Jaguar that stood before him, or he would die. There was nothing else. Better to leave the tags off._

 _Besides, he had enough to worry about already. Scott was rated on the_ Devastator _, but it wasn’t his usual ride. Further complicating matters was the fact that Norris’s ‘Mech wasn’t exactly standard. He’d picked up a pair of snub-nose 105mm lasers in a skirmish with the Jade Falcons before the secession. Lasers that he used to replace the bulkier particle cannons the machine had been designed to bring to bear._

 _They were just as effective as the particle cannons, to be sure, but they didn’t have the same minimum range problems. He’d have to keep that in mind so that he didn’t forget that he could use them in close. He hadn’t had that problem in the_ Old Dog _for years. Her weapons’ range envelopes were so familiar to him that…_

…He barely needed the rangefinders anymore. Most of the time, he could eyeball a target and instinctively tell the best weapon to engage at that range. It was second nature to him. He’d piloted the old girl for so long that she was as much a part of him as his arms or legs. This new suite of…

_…Unfamiliar weapons would do the trick, but God, he missed the old girl. He’d just have to wing it, though. The Jaguars weren’t likely to give him the time to grow accustomed to it. Five Elementals had rounded the corner and were picking their way through the arroyo at the bottom of the canyon. Too much longer, and they were going to…_

_There it was. The lead element of the point stopped and stared into the darkness under the overhang. Then, suddenly, jabbing the laser that tipped his right arm in Scott’s direction, he fired. It was time to move._

_Dropping the crosshairs over the lead Elemental, he squeezed the first target interlock. The right arm gauss rifle fired, sending its nickel-iron alloy slug to cave in the right side of the power armour’s bulbous torso. Ricocheting off the dying warrior, it clipped one of his compatriots on the way to bury itself in the rock wall of the canyon._

_A follow up shot with one of the Clan lasers punched a hole clean through the wounded Elemental’s torso on its way to singe the armour on a third. Already, a kind of red haze was settling over Haley’s vision. All the frustration, all the fear and outrage. All the pain of the whole Clan invasion had finally come to a boil, and these Jaguars were the ones who were going to…_

…Burn as his right arm laser set the fibreboard to light. He hit the plate, but it was a clean miss on the target itself, with flames and smoke licking up from the white space over the black silhouette’s left shoulder. Stomping on one of the foot pedals, he wheeled the _Atlas_ around with a feral snarl. Two dimensional target or not, he wasn’t going to let this stand. He could see…

_…One of the genetically-engineered infantrymen trying to set himself to launch his missiles. Scott touched off the other gauss rifle, this time punching the shot straight through the Elemental’s center of mass. The Jaguar literally exploded as the hypersonic round burst out through his backpack SRM launcher, setting off the reloads stored there._

_The thunderclap of the detonation hurled his surviving brothers to the ground. The bursting warheads peppered the Elemental point with shrapnel and chunks of burning propellant. One of the Jaguars, staggered by the blast, triggered his jets and tried to jump free of the inferno, but Scott wasn’t having it. The other large laser chopped his leg off at the knee and sent him tumbling back into the…_

…Flames licked higher as he pumped pulse after pulse of coherent light into the midsection of the inanimate BattleMech silhouette. One hand slammed the throttle home until it crashed against the stops. The _Atlas_ broke into a run, rapidly eating up the distance between him and the target. Cresting a small ridge, he…

 _…Burst out into sunlight just as the first of the Smoke Jaguar ‘Mechs stepped into view around the corner of the canyon. Seeing movement among the flames, Scott swept the_ Devastator’s _medium lasers back and forth across the Elementals to be sure. Then, wheeling around, he came face to face with the…_

…Fibreboard silhouette. It was just a fibreboard silhouette. Kids used them as targets for suction cup dart guns. It didn’t even have an insignia painted on it. It was just a…

…Hankyu _. Thirty tons, lightweight, and at point blank range. Easy meat._

_He clamped down on the TIC again, slamming a gauss rifle slug through the thin armour over the centerline. He saw the silvery flash of a jump jet dying, followed by a drunken stagger as the blast tumbled the OmniMech’s gyros. Then, before the pilot could recover, a second round punched into the open wound and out through the rear armour to crash into the rocks beyond._

_The lightweight ‘Mech almost seemed to collapse in on itself even as the next target presented itself._ Vulture _. Sixty tons. A heavy. He pumped twin spears of coherent light from his heavy lasers into it without missing a beat, scoring armour across its centreline and right arm even as he toggled his comm unit over to an open channel._

_For one frozen moment, his mind searched for something to say. Then, he remembered something he’d heard an exiled Wolf talking about, and it all snapped into place._

_“My name is General Scott Andrew Haley of the Royal 22nd BattleMech Regiment,” he snarled. “This is my Trial of Grievance. I do not_ care _if you accept.”_

Three hundred meters. Two forty. The silhouette loomed larger and larger in his forward view as he…

 _…Pumped another pair of laser pulses into the_ Vulture _even as the pilot jerked to the side to spoil his aim. The follow-up pair of gauss rifle slugs missed their mark. One streaked wide,sailing off down the canyon, while the other clipped the OmniMech’s arm, tearing it off at the elbow._

 _“You_ dare _?” he demanded. It was like those first few words had broken a dam inside of him. Now it was all coming out. “After Turtle Bay, you dare? You raze whole cities, you burn wounded men in their beds, and you_ dare _pretend like you’re somehow better than us? Because you left and we stayed?”_

 _The_ Devastator _lurched heavily to the left as a Jaguar_ Ryoken _joined the fight, pouring streams of coherent light into the machine’s flank. The_ Vulture _, unbalanced by his assault, added a gauss rifle slug that did nothing more than send up a plume of dirt as it struck the ground between the_ Devastator’ _s legs and skipped off down the canyon._

 _Snarling incoherently, he swung his own gauss rifle wide and clamped down on the trigger. For just a moment, the barest afterimage of a silver streak connected his muzzle with the_ Ryoken’s _cockpit. Then, the OmniMech crumpled lifelessly to the ground, with only a gaping, jagged maw where a pilot once sat._

_Rounding on his foes like a wounded bear facing a pack of wolves, Scott roared his defiance over the open channel. He…_

…Hauled back on the controls, cocking the _Atlas_ ’s arm back. Then, flesh and steel bending together to a single purpose, he plunged it forward. A fist the size of a compact ground car slammed through fibreboard as if it wasn’t even there. Crashing through the silhouette’s head with a force that would have shattered armourplas and crushed the pilot to a bloody smear on its knuckles, it connected the _Atlas_ to the target. Thin wisps of smoke curled into the sky as he…

 _…Dragged himself across the flickering console of the downed_ Devastator _. He could smell burning insulation and singed copper. There was a fire somewhere behind him._ Above him _, he supposed, now that the assault ‘Mech was lying prone. Carefully, gingerly, he lowered himself through the shattered viewport, hissing from the strain. Then, at the full extension of his arm, he dropped the remaining two feet or so to the hull of the_ Gladiator _trapped beneath his downed machine._

_His legs buckled under his weight, and he dropped onto his side. A cry of pain tore itself from between his lips as he flopped over onto his back. Laying there, he awkwardly clawed his pistol from its holster with his left hand. His right arm just wasn’t working right just then. He kept it hugged close to his side and tried not to look at it. He couldn’t feel it, but that wouldn’t last._

_Flipping off the safety on his pistol, he hissed in pain as he rolled over onto his stomach. Awkwardly, with one arm and weak legs, he began dragging himself up the hull towards the other machine’s cockpit. The_ Gladiator _was the last one left, the last Jaguar. It was trapped beneath his machine, but if the pilot could get it moving again…_

_Thumbing the hammer back, he dragged himself up to the viewport and peered over the edge. Inside…_

Scott Haley had been a warrior his entire adult life. He had watched the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers get torn to shreds all around him on Sarna because their CO had put his own personal glory above the safety of his men. He had seen MechWarriors running in panic as their machines burned on Sian. 

And, before falling back for rest and refit, he had walked through the ashes left after a star of Smoke Jaguar Elementals stumbled upon one of his mobile field hospitals in the night. He had seen what was left after they’d turned their flamers and heavy machine guns and ‘Mech grade lasers on the wounded and the orderlies and the doctors alike. Yet, for all of that, he would always remember what he saw in that cockpit.

She was young, seventeen at the most, and she’d not get any older. There was a gash on the side of her neck, and the shoulder of her cooling vest was soaked almost black with blood. She must have caught a piece of shrapnel from something that exploded when he creased her cockpit armour with his last remaining heavy laser. In fact, she was probably already dying when he crashed what was left of Norris’s _Devastator_ into her OmniMech and brought them both down.

At an age when she should have been worrying about homework, when even Clan society said she was too young to be a full warrior yet, she had faced him on the battlefield. Her and the rest of them. When the battle had turned and his people started popping the cockpits of the ‘Mechs they’d downed, that was all they’d found: Solahma warriors and sibkin. Old men and young children fighting for the dying dreams of a doomed culture.

But her age wasn’t really what stuck with him. It was the look of sheer terror frozen on her dead face as she stared out of the cockpit that became her tomb.

He was a soldier. He had _always_ been a soldier, ever since he was old enough to be anything more than a student. He’d killed people. He _knew_ he’d killed people. He’d been doing this for more than thirty years, across four major wars, and who knew how many skirmishes. He’d probably killed _a lot_ of people, and that without even considering those who had died by his orders.

But he’d never really _seen_ many of them. Even when he’d turned his ‘Mech’s weapons on formations of infantry, he hadn’t really seen people die. They were such small, fragile, distant things. They couldn’t be real, could they?

But that girl had been real. And she had been terrified of him. And now she was dead. And he didn’t think he’d ever forget that, no matter how much he might wish he could.

Taking a deep breath, he slowly drew the _Old Dog_ ’s fist free of the smouldering wreckage of the target. Reaching over, he safed the ‘Mech’s weapons and flicked the cap back down over the switch. If there was something wrong with his new cockpit, the problem wasn’t with the ‘Mech. It was with the pilot.

Even with all of her modifications, the _Old Dog_ hadn’t changed. She was still the same, old, faithful war goddess she had been all those years ago when he’d powered her up under Daddy Gunnar’s guidance. For the first time, though, Scott was starting to wonder if maybe _he_ had changed.

He needed to talk to someone, and soon. Until he did, he wasn’t sure if he was really ready to get back in the saddle. Not anymore.


End file.
